Ideology matters: Forget the Christchurch mosque murderer's name, but understand the poisonous ideas that motivated him

A murderer slaughtered 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. We will not here print his name. Nor will we gawk at his sickening video. We do not want to risk inspiring copycats.

But as members of the media and as people in a free and pluralistic society, we must look without flinching at the poisonous ideology that inspired this man to kill. Just as radical Islamism and anti-Semitism and other hateful creeds drive people to kill innocents, boundless fear and hatred and dehumanization of Muslims in this case drove a self-identified white European to enter houses of worship and gun down human beings who were praying to God.

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He took the lives of 49 people, he said, because “The origins of my language is European, my culture is European, my political beliefs are European, my philosophical beliefs are European, my identity is European and, most importantly, my blood is European.” He boasted of deciding “to take a stand to ensure a future for my people.”

Like the far-right terrorist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2001, he believed he was defending the West from an invasion by heathens seeking to infiltrate and pollute his precious culture.

Helping hand. (Mark Baker / AP)

This cannot be conveniently filed away as “deranged.” Simply calling it “evil” does little good either. This is is a virulent belief system, and a specific one, that is growing more common, including in the United States. A Washington Post analysis late last year revealed that “over the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideologies have committed dozens of shootings, bombings and other acts of violence, far more than any other category of domestic extremist.”

When a man killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Florida in 2016, it mattered that he was spurred to act by U.S. attacks on ISIS targets in the Middle East. It mattered that he had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group’s leader. It mattered that he had posted to Facebook, “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes...Now taste the Islamic state vengeance.” We need to similarly understand anti-Muslim killers’ reasons for action today.